Unbroken
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Anomen believes that his love for the Bhaalspawn is shattered as a result of his own actions. But, at his lowest point, in the deadly Underdark, he finds strange common ground with an enemy.


Written for Trismegistus (Lebateleur) for Yuletide 2019.

—

Anomen lowered his head. He couldn't do anything else. Among the drow, the male role was to be silent, supportive, and submissive. It was alien to his true character. Or was it?

Julian was in his every sideways gaze, her name beating in his ribcage like a tattoo drawn on his heart.

He threw himself against the walls of Spellhold asylum in his head. Despair, hopeless struggle, hot bitter desperation. Julian was kidnapped, abused, locked up. All Anomen had done was batter his cell walls until his hands and head were bleeding, then get rescued by a dark figure who looked like she was only half alive. She'd picked the lock to his cell and forced them out herself.

Julian was worn to a shadow ... and then the monster exploded out of her.

Blood red, with long spiky limbs. It was nothing like Julian. It flung itself on their enemies and ate them. Red teeth ripped deep into men's and minotaurs' flesh and devoured ropes of viscera, gobbets of flesh. It had at least three mouths. While it ate, it vomited out blood.

Anomen had not been able to contain his revulsion. He'd seen an unholy creature. He abandoned Julian when she needed him most. He cursed himself. Would that he could turn back time and make amends. He'd throw himself onto the Slayer's claws and let her devour his heart if she would. He had sworn his heart and soul and honour to a woman, and broke his vows at the first opportunity.

"You brought me Solaufein's cloak," said Phaere of House Despana. A powerful drow woman, she spoke only to Aerie - their pretend chief for the time being. Drow expected a priestess to be at the helm. And Julian was in no condition to take back her place.

"We did all you asked of us. Because we are strong!" Aerie said. She overacted her role but barely stuttered at all, and that was as good as they could expect.

Illithids, mind flayers, abominations, had violated all of them. Their sick creeping tentacles reached inside Anomen's brain, inside all their minds. They were used as slaves and forced into the arena. There Anomen, forced to fight, had been made to slay another captive. Solaufein was once Phaere's lover and now for some reason she wanted him dead. Solaufein had called out to Eilistraee before he died. She was a good deity, not wicked like Lloth. Anomen and his companions murdered captives who were just like them.

Anomen felt sick. It had been a sordid struggle in mud made moist by the blood and viscera of other captives, stinking like the Bridge district in midsummer. He was trapped in a form not his own, a male drow, short and slight and seeing in the dark like he was born there. He felt he would never be clean. He reeled on his feet and scarcely heard the voices around him.

That was a pity.

"Tell me, who was it who struck the killing blow?" Phaere said.

"The male. He got lucky. Any one of us would have done the same," Aerie bragged.

Phaere balled up Solaufein's cloak and threw it behind her. "Lend him to me," she told Aerie. It was not a request but an order. "If he pleases me, I shall return him intact. More or less."

"I ... None of us would dare stand in your way, your honourable excellency," Aerie said, her efforts to keep from stuttering telling on her. "This ... ah, lowly male worm ... is nothing to any of us. But ... he is ... He's not very talented at ... um ... you know ... country matters? I think ... it's not like I know personally ... " In her drow form, the blush did not show on Aerie's cheek. She suddenly took inspiration from somewhere and started a fresh wave of speech, rolling in like a tempest. "He is judgmental, immature, pompous, self-righteous, aggressive, insecure, bigoted, and clumsy with words and deeds. He boasts and tells lies a child could see through about what he's done in the past. He berates others who don't measure up to his standards but cannot even keep his own temper in check. He never admits when he has done something wrong and so nobody is ever able to help him. There are other birds in the sky. Wait! I mean, other tadpoles in the breeding pool ... of course."

Aerie's insults were only intended to save Anomen from being raped, but some had the ring of truth to them.

A dangerous smile came upon Phaere's face. "An inarticulate one, is he? That is a welcome contrast to Solaufein. He would bore through anyone's ear with endless meaningless talk. He was ever ... " She stopped her reverie as soon as it began. "As for the rest of your male's faults, they will not matter to me if he keeps his mouth shut and follows orders. You are dismissed from my company, Veldrin. Male!"

She slapped Anomen's face, punishing him for not paying attention. It was far from the worst hit he'd taken. He swayed where he stood anyway. He looked at Phaere's feet, small in sensible walking boots.

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a minute twitch from Julian - or perhaps he saw nothing. He did not look. Aerie hung her head, disappointed in herself. Jaheira appeared grim and stony, although that was her normal appearance. Mazzy drew in a sharp pinched breath and forced herself against flying at Phaere.

"Follow."

Phaere led the way out with utter confidence. Anomen hastened miserably behind her.

_What to do? What is the drow ritual for such things?_ Anomen was weak and understood nothing. Julian had done nothing, not even raised a hand for him. He hadn't deserved her help and yet it shattered him inside.

Drow guards bowed and scraped to Phaere as she passed. Functionaries with arms full of papers looked hopefully in her direction then turned away their gaze. It was as if her expression changed her into a basilisk, that any who saw her in this state must flee or face the penalty. Phaere's role as a drow daughter to the leading House in the city meant she could do far more and worse than turn others to stone.

Anomen trailed behind Phaere on her stairs. He had the feeling that other drow reacted to him like he would react to a street harlot in a house he visited. The doors to Phaere's sanctum swung inwards on an oiled whisper, spelled by magic to respond to her approach. All was dark, with sweeping black marble opening like the wide prow of a ship. Phaere's quarters were mostly empty space. An iron abacus clinked slightly on a large desk piled with straightened scrolls. Banked mosses smouldered in a dull fire and the bedsheets were tucked in with a neatness that made Anomen suddenly homesick for his Order. He'd learnt the hard way how to make a bed like that, going from a foolish novice thinking that bed-making was beneath him to a disciplined squire - not that the skill was in any demand.

He dropped to his knees, feeling that something like that was probably expected of him. He bowed his head.

Phaere's voice was as chill as frost on iron. "Male. Remove my boots."

Anomen's fingers were clumsy hams. Strangely, the drow woman's legs seemed to shake independently of his hands. He noticed the tracing of a long raised scar up her right leg, like a twisted black serpent. A mark more likely of deliberate torture than accidental or battle injury. He didn't touch it, tried not to show he'd noticed.

"Stand. Hands on my hips. No. Hands to your side. You are more or less of a height. Lower your mouth to mine. That is something I used to like."

Anomen broke every vow he'd made to the Order of the Radiant Heart. He offered his virtue to a drow only because he didn't want to die. But the cold law of his Order was only dust and ashes compared to the deepest weight on his heart.

_Julian. I betray Julian, and worst of all she cares nothing about it._ He fumbled coldly with Phaere's mouth.

She wasn't responsive. Nothing about Phaere wanted this either. She bit down with sharp teeth on his lip, then ripped her face away. Anomen tasted his own salt blood - there was no difference to that taste as a man or as a drow. Suddenly he laid his hands around Phaere's back and held her in place. She twisted but could not break his grip.

"It was an accident," he said. "The mind flayers forced Solaufein to fight. They forced all of us to fight. I did not intend to murder him. I tripped on someone else's intestines and broke his leg. It was a sad and sordid end, but they always are. I could say he was brave, a good fighter, but death is never dignified and never heroic. We killed those who truly killed him by drowning them in sewer waters from their prisoners' privy."

"What makes you think I care about his end? Release me!" Phaere said. Her voice was fierce but she made an effort to keep it low. She struggled with fists and bare feet, not with a drow's magic. Anomen was far stronger than her.

She bit his collarbone - hard - but he did not let go. Phaere spat blood and skin in his face and tossed her head. She breathed harshly but gave up for the moment.

"Gossip. Everyone gossips in Ust Natha. They told you what happened." Phaere's words cut like a stinging scalpel but still she kept her voice low instead of calling for help. "Yet gossip almost always lies. Trust it not."

There was no doubt that her guards would have slain Anomen in an instant. Except - Anomen understood - she knew that to call for help would make her seem weak. She would have to cut him up slowly into tiny little pieces for revenge at a later time.

"You heard of me and Solaufein? My matron and my sisters thought he distracted me from my duties. Well, perhaps they were right. My sisters are dead now, so I suppose that means they were _not_ right." Phaere spoke into Anomen's chest. "There was me and Solaufein. Then the Handmaidens of Lloth _re-educated_ me. I learnt better than to indulge in such things. Slaves like you are better to use and discard and kill when they no longer suit your fancy. He is dead because I _wanted_ him dead. I ordered outsiders like you to kill him, because you were too stupid to fear the power of his House. Now he is dead, and you - and you are digging your own grave very expertly. I have never met a drow as suicidal as you."

"I deserve to die," Anomen answered in kind. "Kill me later. You know that you wish to. I wanted - I challenge you," he said. "Though a newcomer in your city, I think I know about a place that you do not. I wished - there was someone else that I wished to make a grand gesture toward. Nothing is of any use now. Shall I show you?"

He released Phaere suddenly. She staggered aside. Phaere's arms were free and she reached within her sleeve. Then she lashed at Anomen with a stinging, scarring dart concealed in her fingertips. Its blade bloodied him and ripped a chunk out of his face. It burnt him like acid.

"I hope that you know what that is," Phaere said. Anomen waited. "Araj, of course. The secret of the black-spotted scorpion. An Ust Natha specialty. You will feel as yourself for a full candle's rotation. Then your death comes. Unless I am willing to supply you the antidote, of course - or unless you do a massive favour to one of Lloth's chosen."

So this was his sentence. Anomen stayed motionless. Phaere did not know that Anomen himself could remove poison, since drow males were not permitted to cast divine magic. But perhaps his pitiful prayers would never be up to the task. Let both of them believe that he would die.

Phaere tugged her boots on. "You may show me this claimed secret," she said. "If it be an ambush, your companions and yourself shall also die."

She set off after him without another word.

Anomen had hopes of reaching for Julian again when they came to Ust Natha. He had once brought her crimson rhodelias to declare his emotions. He wanted to make another grand gesture to her to show that he still loved, that he wished for forgiveness. But the endless nights had worn on and on and in Julian's eyes was only the same emptiness as she'd had in the asylum. She was bleak and indifferent to everything, except when she changed into the Slayer at the cry for bloodshed.

Anomen had lied to Phaere about the mind flayers' ends. They had released the sewer water in their attack, it was true, but then Julian became the monster again. They'd fled to a safe distance and waited until everyone was dead. The monster devoured what it slew and Aerie found Julian lying in the waste, covered in blood with pieces of heart in her mouth.

Anomen's early explorations of this drow city had led him to its outskirts, to the places where farmers grew moss and mushrooms underground. There he'd gone further, seeking the undertrodden ways. When he was a child in Athkatla his sister Moira took him on long walks outside the corruption of the city and picked wildflowers and savoury herbs from out-of-the-way paths. He'd oriented himself between the river and the end of the farmlands, found an overgrown path through a cavern where cold air blew all the way through.

He lent Phaere his arm along the path he had prepared for Julian. He had trampled just enough of the vegetation to make it passable, not enough to make it obvious that someone had been here. He had asked Jaheira to tell him which Underdark plants were poisonous and which not. He had killed and buried several carnivorous flying lizards. They walked over a bed of a vine that grew soft grey flowers, down a rough stone path. He felt Phaere's growing impatience mixed with her grief - that she, a drow noble, dared do something so plebeian in the company of a man she'd just poisoned.

Perhaps Phaere, like him, was desperate enough to simply be alone with no judgment that she tolerated even this.

Anomen pulled aside a last curtain of vines at the mouth of a cave. The small white flowers growing on the strands looked almost pretty, but the touch of them gave a mild rash. He spared Phaere and parted the way for her.

"Here."

The sound of rushing water filled their ears. Here was darkness even to a drow's infravision. Tangled vine fronds and a cliff face hid most of the sight before them. All was plain and dark.

"A failure, male," Phaere said. "I have not troubled to go to this place ... because it is not worth the going."

"Please. Take a seat," Anomen asked. He had heaped up soft grasses and moss to make a rough chair. Phaere brushed her hands over it to check for hidden traps and let herself rest. The ground was soft around them, soft enough to sleep on.

Anomen turned his back on Phare. A horrid impoliteness. He took out his belt knife and sliced his own palm deeply where she could not see him. Then he shook the droplets of blood out upwards, throwing them as far and fast as he could up the cliff face. He turned back.

Slowly, a blue glow lit up the darkness. The moss on the cliff face turned luminescent, shedding radiance like a hundred stars in the blackest midnight. Each bright spot lit up its neighbours in turn, shimmering and softly swaying in the wind.

Jaheira had told Anomen that kind of moss was carnivorous, that some drow wizard had experimented with plants eating people; it lit up at the scent of blood in order to lure prey. Yet despite the grisliness of it there was beauty in the Underdark.

It was Julian he had longed to show this sight. Anomen watched Phaere's gaze, noted how she looked. Her mouth parted as if she wished to speak of a memory, then thought better of it. He deftly bound up his hand with a bandage soaked in salve. They watched the moss lights shine before them and drunk in the moment of quiet like it was water after a long march in the sun.

Anomen reached into a hollow in the cliff face and found the waxed parcel he'd placed earlier. He unrolled his supplies on a makeshift table, a piece of an old stool from the drow tavern. Hard-boiled eggs from a kind of scaled bird that the drow used instead of chickens; pickled mushroom halves; swollen watercress leaves that did duty for bread; a flask of half-decent azure wine, deeply steeped and tasting of almonds, a bouquet of dried underground violets tied to its flask and giving off a sweet scent.

"Refreshments," Phaere said. Anomen could tell that it was difficult even for a controlled drow noble not to give into hunger after a long walk and a long day. Her struggle was apparent on her face before she gave in. "You cut, and I will choose," she ordered.

You cannot eat a picnic with another person without degrading into some informality.

"My sister taught me to like this sort of thing," Anomen offered timidly, when Phaere was just beginning to start on more than her share of the hard-boiled eggs. "She was four years older than me. Our mother ... ah, matron mother ... died when I was quite young. There were only two of us." And their drunken and vituperative father Cor Delryn, but the less said of him the better.

"Then your sister was your matron mother," Phaere said. "Were there no cousins? Could you not have petitioned to be taken in by a greater House? Give me the salt."

"We claimed kinship with some other Houses, but their matrons did not wish to know us." Anomen translated his story into drow culture as he spoke. "They were wealthier." His father Cor and later his sister Moira had gone and begged - there was no more dignified word for it - from distant relatives, the Caans and the Roenalls and others. They'd got nothing. Anomen's pride still revolted and sickened at his memories.

Phaere inclined her head. It seemed some things were universal.

"She would take me away from our city and into forgotten paths often," Anomen said. "It made me see that our city was dark and corrupt, with much crowding and injustice. I was alone with my thoughts. When sensations and wrongs and hatred and bitterness crowd your heart and you cannot think straight, it is good to be alone."

Phaere bit through the top of an egg and sprinkled a precise measure of salt on its innards. "There are some similar wildernesses about the little svirfneblin gnomes' settlement. Warm and comfortable caverns tucked out of the way of other drow, heated by old demonic fires in the earth. Solaufein made amicable arrangements with those gnomes. He was unnaturally warm and open-handed, for a drow. It worked for him, for a time. He and I often journeyed outside Ust Natha to take simple meals like this. We read and talked of scrolls that had nothing to do with our roles in life. Dirt gathered in our hair and pebbles were uncomfortable below our skin when we had intercourse, but oddly we did not object to it. It was as if the wilder space we found outside the city was a discovery for us alone ... " She let her train of thought dissolve into the air. Her jaw set and she changed her subject.

"You mentioned your matron sister in the past tense. I assume she was killed before you joined your current matron Veldrin; unless you were the one who betrayed her." Phaere rearranged the boiled eggs into a neat figure of five below her fingers, then helped herself again. "Did you turn against your unnaturally generous sister in the end? That would be an interesting story."

"She was killed," Anomen agreed. It was not long after he had joined Julian, not long after he had given her a bouquet of crimson rhodelias. He had left Athkatla and failed to watch by Moira's side, had failed in every respect to protect his sister. "My father said his old rival did it. I wanted to revenge myself on the man - ah, the drow male. I was maddened by grief and rage. I thought I would break open his mansion and kill his own daughter myself, before his eyes."

Anomen's bloody words and memories were cast wide open to this midnight place. They rung over a quiet mossy grove, over pickled mushrooms at a picnic, into the ears of a woman who had just lost her old lover by his hands.

Phaere sipped at her wine. She spoke in a cautious, measured way. "That revenge would be approved of by most as fitting. Of course, leaving the male alive and without a daughter would cause him to become powerless. I would have advised caution and killing him after his daughter, but nonetheless that is not a bad plan. Did you do it?"

"My lo ... my current matron stopped me," Anomen said. Phaere would think he meant Aerie-Veldrin, not Julian.

Phaere laid down the wine and took up another egg. "That sounds weak."

"There is a nest of corruption within my heart, rage and hatred growing like rooted trees below the surface. Like the descending tree roots that approach to strangle drow cities," Anomen said. He'd seen and heard drow talk about wicked surface elves using their poisonous trees as weapons to attack Underdark cities. "I saw corruption everywhere and yet the seeds of it were within myself the whole time. Jul ... My matron Veldrin ... pointed out to me that I only had my father's word that his rival was guilty. Could it have been that he was wrong? There was no proof. I have never felt so bleak until ... " Until he had come to the Underdark, he did not say. "I did not take revenge. I was helpless and impotent. And yet I was held back from recklessly acting as I did not wish to act. I still feel the despair and loss within me, growing with each passing candle."

Phaere munched her way around the last boiled egg. "I was stronger than you in my revenge," she said. "Perhaps gossip told you my own sister turned me into my matron. Solaufein was a bad influence on me. I treated him like a companion instead of like a typical male, and that is forbidden by Lloth. He distracted me from my family duties. So my dear sister turned me over to my mother, and _she_ gave me to the Handmaidens." Phaere's features shuddered. Anomen pretended not to see. "I never knew exactly which of my sisters turned me in. So I assassinated them all, of course. Now you killed Solaufein and completed my revenge for me. I am the first daughter of the greatest House in Ust Natha. If your Veldrin continues to cooperate with me, I will rule Ust Natha in my own right - and I will not be unwilling to share its rewards. You will have more material goods than you could ever dream of, male."

Phaere's words promised them the world, and yet her voice sounded like she promised only a dinner of dust and ashes. Perhaps if Anomen had slain the corrupt nobleman Saerk Farrahd and his daughter Surayah, he would still be tasting the same dust and ashes that he tasted now.

Both he and Phaere had done terrible things. Both he and Phaere had had terrible things visited upon them. Either way, they had ended up the same.

"To sit here and drink this shabby wine, talking of my sister, has brought me a small measure of peace," Anomen said. "I do not know what that is worth."

The drow gave an infinitesimal shrug. But she looked at the blue light of the moss once more and breathed in the fresher air.

"Still, I suppose that when we win Ust Natha, we will have fine bloodwine instead of this shabby drink - be served by many rather than sprinkle our own salt and lick our own fingers - dine on freshly plucked tentacles rather than these lowly pickled mushrooms," Anomen said.

Phaere's fingers reached for one of the mushrooms. She chewed with some thought. "Male, I see your conspiracy," she announced. "You speak poorly of these mushrooms in hopes that I will leave you to finish them. Well, that will not be the case. We will each take what we can chew, and woe betide the loser of the last mushroom.

"Either way, of course, you will be the one to clean up afterwards."

It was settled amicably enough; Anomen divided the very last mushroom in two.

The moss lights slowly flickered, retreated back into darkness. Phaere sat peacefully back while Anomen wrapped the dishes and packed the empty wine bottle to take away with them. "Stay," she ordered him. "I would - forget - a moment longer. Your performance on our wager for your life has been adequate, male."

"When I said it, I was surprised you didn't blast me with unholy - ah, holy - fire, where I stood," Anomen said. "Or summon a swarm of lake flies to eat me alive from the inside out. You are of course a very powerful priestess and ... "

Phaere's mouth moved. It was almost a smile from her. "You utter imbecile! Do you see my priestess colours?" She shook her black cloak. Anomen gulped - if he had noticed that Phaere's clothing was plainer than other noble drow, it was certainly not on a conscious level.

"No, you do _not_ see my priestess colours, because I am not a priestess! I may be a matron mother's daughter ... but my actual profession is a mathematician. If you need me to explain what that is, you may ask."

"I am sure my pitiful male brain could not begin to understand," Anomen said.

"It's more dangerous than it sounds. Even the highest followers of Lloth know how to quail when faced with double entry bookkeeping."

"I wish you luck with overthrowing your mother," Anomen said. It was not a lie. Perhaps Phaere would see him dead, perhaps the other way. He was only a masquerader - he was only a dead, treacherous man. They both held the black thorns of betrayal in their hearts.

_Julian ..._ Anomen thought.

"I will count this as winning the bet, male," Phaere said. "Report yourself to my office for the antidote tomorrow. Perhaps I'll kill you later."


End file.
